How the Wealthy Convince the Poor to Keep Them in Power
illustrates this corruption through concrete examples: campaign donations functioning as investments that yield orders-of-magnitude returns through government contracts and regulatory changes.
In 1952, politician Aneurin Bevan asked a powerful question: How does wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? His question captured one of democracy’s biggest contradictions. Today, in a world dominated by billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and J.D. Vance, Bevan’s paradox has only become more extreme.
We see this contradiction in action as tech billionaires prepare to profit from a Trump presidency. Many of these men have disturbing histories—mistreating their partners, supporting books that justify torture and the removal of human rights, and making billions from government contracts while trying to dismantle programs that help the poor. Now, they are gathering at Mar-a-Lago, pledging loyalty to Trump, and positioning themselves to take direct control of government power.
Palantir and Tesla: Political Influences on Market Trajectories
A Visual Analysis of Stock Performance (2016-2025)
Introduction
This presentation examines how Peter Thiel's Palantir and Elon Musk's Tesla have experienced significant market fluctuations between 2016 and 2025, with particular emphasis on the impact of Donald Trump's presidency and re-election. We'll explore the dramatic rise and subsequent volatility of both companies through data visualization and timeline analysis.
Palantir Technologies (PLTR)
The Data Intelligence Giant
Founded by Peter Thiel, Palantir has become a critical player in government contracts and data analytics, with its fortunes closely tied to political developments.
Palantir: Key Metrics
| Metric | Value | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Peak Stock Price | $125.41 | February 2025 |
| Current Price | $83.65 | As of March 13, 2025 |
| Peak Market Cap | $140B | Surpassed Lockheed Martin |
| Decline from Peak | -33.3% | Feb 2025 to Mar 2025 |
Palantir: Stock Trajectory
$125.41 ●
│
│
$100.00 │ ╭──●
│ ╱ ╲
│ ╱ ╲
$75.00 │ ╱ ●
│ ╱
│ ╱
$50.00 │╱
│
│
$25.00 │
└────────────────
2024 2025
Simplified visual representation showing Palantir's dramatic rise and subsequent decline
Palantir: Timeline of Key Events
- November 2024: Trump's re-election victory triggers market surge
- December 2024: Stock climbs rapidly, adding $23B in market value
- January 2025: Market cap reaches $140B, surpassing Lockheed Martin
- February 2025:
- Stock peaks at all-time high of $125.41
- February 19: 10% drop to $112.06 following reports of potential defense budget cuts
- March 13, 2025: Stock price at $83.65, down 33.3% from peak
Tesla (TSLA)
The Electric Vehicle Pioneer
Elon Musk's Tesla has shown even more pronounced volatility, with dramatic swings mirroring political developments and changing market sentiment.
Tesla: Key Metrics
| Metric | Value | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Peak Stock Price | $479.86 | December 2024 |
| Current Price | $310.01 | As of March 13, 2025 |
| Recent Low | $226.11 | March 10, 2025 |
| Decline from Peak | -35.4% | Dec 2024 to Mar 2025 |
Tesla: Stock Trajectory
$500.00 │ ●
│ ╱ ╲
│ ╱ ╲
$400.00 │ ╱ ╲
│ ╱ ╲
│ ╱ ╲
$300.00 │╱ ●
│ ╲
│ ╲
$200.00 │ ●
│
│
$100.00 │
└─────────────────
2024 2025
Simplified visual representation showing Tesla's surge and subsequent volatility
Tesla: Timeline of Key Events
- November 2024: Trump's re-election victory catalyzes stock surge
- December 2024:
- Shares increase by 91% post-election
- Stock reaches all-time high of $479.86
- March 6, 2025: Stock falls 40% from December peak
- March 10, 2025: Another 14% drop to $226.11
- March 13, 2025: Slight rebound to $310.01, still 35.4% below peak
Comparative Analysis
| Company | Peak-to-Current Decline | Duration | Political Correlation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Palantir | -33.3% | ~1 month | Strong positive, then negative |
| Tesla | -35.4% | ~3 months | Strong positive, then negative |
Key Insights
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Initial Electoral Euphoria: Both stocks experienced dramatic post-election surges, reflecting market optimism about Trump's second term.
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Policy Reality Check: The subsequent declines appear linked to emerging concerns about government spending cuts and changing policy priorities.
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Volatility Patterns: Tesla showed more extreme swings than Palantir, reflecting differing market perceptions of vulnerability to policy shifts.
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CEO-Political Relationships: The market appears to price in the perceived relationships between Musk/Thiel and the Trump administration, with both positive and negative implications.
From their perspective, their support for Trump is an incredible investment. For a few hundred million dollars in campaign donations, they stand to gain hundreds of billions.
In return for their financial backing, these tech elites expect three major rewards:
- Huge government contracts that will pump public money into their businesses.
- Deregulation that removes limits on their industries, allowing them to push forward with controversial projects—like self-driving cars, AI-powered weapons, and energy-draining tech—without concern for public impact.
- Greater control over workers, suppliers, and competitors, as government policies shift in their favor.
But their ambitions go beyond just money and power. Thiel’s favorite book, The Sovereign Individual, argues that ultra-rich elites are like ancient gods and should rightly rule the world. The book predicts a future where traditional governments collapse, leaving the wealthy to control society. Thiel himself has openly said that his vision of freedom is incompatible with democracy. In reality, this "freedom" just means shifting power away from elected governments and into the hands of billionaires like him.
Is This Anything New?
As corrupt as today’s tech elites may seem, history tells us this isn’t a new phenomenon. When George W. Bush legalized torture at Guantanamo Bay, many Americans mourned the loss of their country's moral standing. But was America truly "innocent" before then? Consider the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, Prohibition, Hiroshima, McCarthyism, Vietnam, the assassinations of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, and even domestic terrorism like the Oklahoma City bombing. History is full of dark moments, and the cycle of wealthy elites manipulating government for their own gain has played out before.
We saw this with John D. Rockefeller, whose corporate empire was more powerful than Musk’s. Thomas Edison publicly electrocuted an elephant to sway the government in favor of his electric system. Henry Ford bought newspapers to pressure mayors into tearing up streetcar systems so more people would buy cars.
Before the internet, these tycoons shaped politics and culture through different means. The Koch brothers spent decades funding think tanks to make neoliberalism—a system that favors the wealthy over the majority—seem like a fight for "freedom." Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs embedded themselves in government, removing financial regulations that once kept them in check.
The New Weapon: Cloud Capital
So what makes today’s billionaires even more dangerous than those of the past? They now have something new: cloud capital—a form of wealth that didn’t exist before. Unlike traditional industries that produce physical goods, cloud capital is designed to shape human behavior.
Cloud capital includes:
- Networks of AI-driven machines, server farms, and data centers that collect and analyze everything we do online.
- Social media algorithms that determine what we see, what we want, and what we buy.
- Automated systems that bypass traditional markets, selling products directly based on our behavior.
This system does five things no previous form of capital could do:
- It captures our attention.
- It creates our desires.
- It sells us things directly, outside traditional markets.
- It controls workers through real-time monitoring.
- It extracts free labor from us—when we post reviews, share videos, or engage with online content, we are working for the system without pay.
This has turned ordinary people into cloud serfs, endlessly producing data that tech giants monetize. In warehouses and factories, algorithms push workers to their limits, tracking their every move through digital devices strapped to their bodies.
The Ultimate Power Grab
The owners of this system—the cloud aristocrats—now wield a level of power that past industrial tycoons could only dream of. They extract free labor from billions of people while raking in vast amounts of money from businesses forced to rely on their digital infrastructure. And now, they have bought their way into Trump’s inner circle, securing a direct role in government decision-making.
So, returning to Bevan’s question: How does wealth persuade poverty to keep it in power? Today, the answer is clearer than ever. Through cloud capital, the new elite can manipulate our behavior in ways no previous rulers could. This technology-based control system ensures that the wealthy stay in charge, no matter how much the rest of us may suffer.
At this point, only a major shift—something as big as a revolution—can bring back real democracy and personal freedom.
Analyzing Power Dynamics Through Three Philosophical Lenses
This presents a striking portrait of our modern power landscape—one where technology billionaires have developed novel mechanisms for translating wealth into political influence. Let me analyze this through three distinct philosophical frameworks that help us understand different aspects of this troubling dynamic.
John Adams' Moral Algorithm: The Subversion of Common Good
Adams' principle that "Government is instituted for the common good" offers a foundational benchmark against which we can measure our current reality. What emerges from this text is a stark inversion of Adams' moral algorithm—a system where government increasingly serves private interests rather than public welfare.
The described relationship between tech billionaires and political power represents precisely what Adams warned against:
When wealth redirects government to serve "the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men," it fundamentally corrupts the social contract.
This illustrates this corruption through concrete examples: campaign donations functioning as investments that yield orders-of-magnitude returns through government contracts and regulatory changes. This transaction—hundreds of millions in political contributions for the potential of hundreds of billions in benefits—transforms democracy from a system serving the common good into a mechanism for wealth multiplication.
What Adams would find particularly concerning is how this arrangement has become normalized. The text suggests a self-reinforcing cycle where increased wealth enables increased political influence, which in turn generates greater wealth concentration—a pattern that progressively distances government from its foundational purpose of serving "the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people."
Rawls' Veil of Ignorance: An Unjustifiable Social Arrangement
If we apply Rawls' thought experiment—designing society without knowing our position within it—the system described becomes morally indefensible. Behind the veil of ignorance, would anyone choose:
- A society where algorithms maximize worker productivity through constant surveillance?
- A system where our attention and desires are manufactured by profit-maximizing entities?
- An arrangement where a few individuals can leverage political influence to secure billions in government contracts?
The answer is self-evidently no. No rational person, unaware of their future position, would design such a system.
The concept of "cloud capital" described in the text represents a particularly problematic development when viewed through Rawls' framework. This new form of capital does more than extract physical labor—it harvests our attention, shapes our desires, and transforms our social interactions into unpaid work. This creates asymmetries of power that exceed even the industrial-era inequalities Rawls was addressing.
What makes this especially troubling is how these arrangements are hidden beneath a veneer of consumer convenience and technological innovation. The extraction happens invisibly, making it difficult for most people to recognize the structural unfairness that would be immediately apparent from behind the veil of ignorance.
Aristotle's Critique: The Corruption of Purpose and Balance
Aristotle would approach this situation by examining how it distorts the natural purpose of political, economic, and social arrangements.
For Aristotle, the purpose of the political community is eudaimonia—human flourishing. The text describes a system increasingly oriented not toward collective flourishing but toward the multiplication of wealth for those who already possess it in abundance. This represents what Aristotle would call a corruption of purpose.
Aristotle distinguished between natural acquisition (meeting genuine needs) and unnatural acquisition (pursuit of unlimited wealth). The "cloud capital" described constitutes an extreme form of the latter—a system designed not to serve human needs but to extract maximum value through the manipulation of human behavior.
The text's description of tech elites viewing themselves as "like ancient gods" would particularly trouble Aristotle, who emphasized the importance of virtuous leadership. For Aristotle, true leadership involves phronesis (practical wisdom) oriented toward the common good, not power exercised primarily for self-interest.
Aristotle's political theory emphasized constitutional balance—the mixing of different interests to prevent any single group from dominating. The text describes precisely the opposite: a progressive concentration of power that threatens to transform democracy into what Aristotle would recognize as oligarchy—rule by the wealthy few.
Synthesizing These Perspectives
These three philosophical frameworks highlight different aspects of the same troubling reality:
- Adams shows us the corruption of purpose: Government increasingly serves private rather than public interests
- Rawls reveals the fundamental injustice: These arrangements could never be justified from behind the veil of ignorance
- Aristotle identifies the distortion of natural order: Political and economic systems increasingly serve wealth multiplication rather than human flourishing
Together, they paint a portrait of a system that has drifted far from its moral foundations—one where new technologies magnify old power imbalances and create entirely new mechanisms for influence and control.
The text's conclusion that "only a major shift—something as big as a revolution—can bring back real democracy and personal freedom" resonates with Adams' assertion that people have the right "to reform, alter, or totally change" government when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it. What remains an open question is what form such a transformation might take in our increasingly technological society.